Keck

One of the main things we did at the top of Mauan Kea was visit the W.M. Keck Observatories. We were up there as part of a self-drive tour, the guides were pretty damn knowledgeable, lots of interesting info was imparted.

Keck has two telescopes. Which can be used together for judging distances, like how we use two eyes, by processing how the background moves behind the object for the two separate images.  Its known as interferometry, though with my rudimentary knowledge of physics having a baseline of tens of metres for a pair of telescopes seems fairly pointless for the distances required.  For example, the second Gemini telescope is in Chile.  But these guys are probably better physicists than I am, so I trust them that they can make it work.

The inside of the Keck telescope, staring up at the back of the 10m primary mirrors, the second largest optical telescope mirrors in the world. The large primary mirror is actually 36 smaller hexagonal mirrors, each one can be controlled independantly and moved by microns every fraction of a second.  There is some amazing technology going on here. They keep the inside of the observatory refrigerated so that when they open the doors at night, there's no temperature difference. To go with an impressive telescope with impressive technology, there's also some impressive science going on here. At a cost to the user of just $50,000 a night. A snip! As you can imagine there's a long waiting list, for just for a couple of minutes on the telescope.

 The Keck twin telescopes at sunset.

Keck opens up for a night of stargazing.

Science, with altitude

Up on the top of Mauna Kea, the highest of the Hawaiian volcanoes theres some rather cool science going on.  With such little light pollution, generally clear skies, and being above a fair amount of the earth's atmosphere, the summit of Mauna Kea is an ideal place for studying the stars, and many of the world's best telescopes are to be found here.  We took a self-drive tour up to the top of the volcano to explore. At 4205m high its pretty damn tall, and we certainly felt the effects of the altitude. Even staying at the visitor's centre at 2800m for over an hour, didn't get rid of the issue, but it certainly helped.

 The UK infrared telescope. Its just looks so British compared to the sleek modern domes that surround it.

We went for a short walk that was very slow due to the altitude up to the actual summit, away from the telescopes. There was occasionally the reminder that this is indeed still a volcano, albeit now a dormant one. The top of the volcano is sacred to native Hawaiians and so there is often much debate as to how much presence the telescopes should have on top of the mountain. Its a very complicated issue and certainly not as straightforward as just the scientists moving into a sacred area.  The Hawaiians didn't care until their recent cultural awakening, though perhaps the scientists could have been more sensitive. Hawaiian culture is based on stargazing and navigation, so is this modern science just an extension of Hawaii's heritage.

We stayed up after the tour had finished (along with most people on it) to watch the sunset from the top.  It was spectacular.

 The Subaru telescope opens up at sunset.

 The Gemini telescope opens up for the night. The other one is in Chile. (Putting your telescopes far apart enables you to get a better idea of distances, just like having two eyes)

 The UK infrared telescope, along with a small horde of tourists up watching the sunset.

A nice view on the way down.  They force you off the top of the mountain pretty quickly after sunset so that the scientists can get to work. Headlights can really screw up their observations.

Saturn, viewed through a telescope.

But there's time for some stargazing back down at the visitor's centre.  In fact, due to the lack of oxygen at the mountain's summit the brain doesn't work so well at altitude.  Therefore the best place to view stars with the naked eye is at the visitor's centre, where they have viewings at the weekends (I'm guessing its still possible to "view" the stars during the week, but they have local amateur astronomers with their telescopes there at weekends and hot chocolate and the like!). Even if one of the guides giving a night sky talk was a little crazy with his science, the stars were incredible. Just so beautiful, and we got a good look at a planet or two through some of the telescopes. Pretty damn good!

Where there's smoke...

Of course, Kilauea isn't just a volcano that erupted recently, its a volcano that is erupting.  The most active volcano on the planet is erupting near constantly. Just not quite as much as normal when we were there.  Normally there is one crater down on the East Rift Zone that you can see a lava lake, and a fissure that opens up near the sea where the lava pours into the ocean. Very photogenic stuff and great for tourism.  But Pele (A Hawaiian goddess who's nominally in charge of volcanoes and fire, not that the Hawaiian gods and goddesses are gods of anything the way the Greek and Roman ones were) is her own master and isn't always obliging.  Occasionally obliterating villages and destroying roads and occasionally not doing very much at all.  In early March, there was a burst of activity, which saw a small collapse in the East Rift Zone, the lava lake shrank back into the volcanic vent and the far eastern fissure stopped erupting.  So there was nowhere to watch lava whilst we were there.  A bit disappointing but still...

It is an active volcano, and active volcanoes do tend to smoke a bit, even if there isn't lava coming out. Which is still pretty damn cool.  An boy does Kilauea smoke.  There's been elevated sulphur dioxide levels in the National Park for a couple of years, indicating that something is going on. Half of the park (luckily the more boring half) is closed to visitors.

This is the view across, the small side crater at Kilauea, with the big one stretching off into the distance.

Then at the end of the day, after cycling around the park, we took a quick drive round to the other side of the crater/caldera in the fading light.  In the photo above, the circular thing is the crater. Pretty much everything in shot is the caldera, its about 3x5km. With smoke rising up above, and as darkness fell, we got an unexpected treat.

Whilst you might not be able to see the lava (its a couple of hundred metres below the surface in the vent), you can see the glow of the lava, bouncing off the smoke plume. Its so awesome! And as it gets darker (and colder!) the light gets brighter.  Luckily there's a pretty damn good museum on the caldera rim (along with the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory) to keep warm and entertained in between just standing outside and watching the amazing glow. A little view into the earth's interior (kind of).

Plus, as a little aside, the flanks of Mauna Loa, which sits above Kilaeua, have started expanding.  Something is brewing under big island and its probably magma!

Baby Rocks

As a geologist I'm fairly used to dealing with rocks that are millions, or hundreds of millions, and occasionally billions (I have held the hand-sample of the Jack Hills Conglomerate which contains the oldest minerals on Earth at 4.4 billion years old but thats another story!). But things on Hawaii are a little younger.

This is the youngest lava flow on Maui, known as the 1790 flow, because the maps of the island made in 1791 were different from those made by Captain Cook in the 1770s. It might actually be older than that, the maps may not be accurate.  But it was around then.

For the second part of the trip we moved on from the dormant volcano of Maui and onto the active volcanic island of Hawaii, also known as Big Island, when distinction is needed between the island and the chain of islands. We went to Kilauea volcano, the most active volcano on earth (unfortunately not spewing lava when we went) which have baby rocks (note: not a technical term), some only a few weeks old.  All together now: awwwwwww.

Hawaii is a shield volcano.  As the lava is so runny you don't get the iconic cone shapes that build up on more stereotypical volcanoes.  And they tend to erupt for longer periods of time.  As a result the lava spreads out over large distances, forming a shield shape.  This can mean that, in places the volcano isn't that tall and is relatively flat.  Kilauea is a bit like that, dwarfed by Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea above it which have built up higher as they are older volcanoes. This means its possible to cycle around Kilaeau National Park and go and see the sights by bike, rather than trapse around by car.  It was a well needed break from the car, and meant we got to on some of the tracks round the park where cars can't go and had some of the park to ourselves. Especially when we came across this on a lava flow that dates to just 1973 (or so).

 Its a volcano monitoring station. With super-accurate GPS units, gas monitoring, tilt-metres and the like, all designed to measure tiny changes in the volcano's shape and output that give little clues as to location and movement of magma deep below the ground.  This is how geologists predict eruptions!

Of course there are some parts of the park where you can't go.  Some due to current or potential volcanic activity, others because of past activity:

 I'm used to road cuts through rock providing useful geological outcrops.  But here the rock has revenge, the 1973 lava flow has reached the road here, and behind it has completely covered it over. How cool is that?!

 In the background above is the 1973 flow, in the foreground, part of the 1969 flow.  The crack running down the left with the trees next to it is the fissure from which the lava erupted.

 Me above the fissure!

 More views of recent lava flows

 The 1973 flow, barren, rocky, almost alien, but very very cool!

Igneous Speleothems? Dark goings on inside lava tubes.

On the island of Maui, and also Big Island, in Hawaii there are lava tubes.  We visited the biggest one on Maui for a bit of a look around. Lava tubes are, as the name might suggest, tubes made of lava! When lava flows flow downhill the outer surfaces cool, solidify and harden as they're exposed to the atmosphere. Typically the top surface of the flow is put under stress from the flowing lava beneath and it breaks up and rejoins the flow.  Thus many lava flows form their own levees which channel the flow downhill. This is fairly normal. Sometimes, however, the top surface doesn't break up and it too cools and hardens forming a solid crust around the flow.  Since rock is a fairly good insulator the inside of the flow remains warm and gooey and continues to flow through underneath the crust.  If all of the flow comes out at the far end then you're left with a hollow structure known as a lava tube. Overtime more flows might flow through the tube, cooling and thickening the walls and cutting deeper down into the bedrock beneath, so these things can become quite large with all sorts of erosional and depositional features you might expect from caves made by the erosional power of water

Lava tubes even have speleothems (that's stalactites and stalagmites) although they form in a completely different way to the limestone ones which I study.

Descent into the lava tubes

The way down

Chocolate brown stalactites

Stalactites are pretty common, formed when the dropping lava levels form drips on the upper surface, that cool and solidify.  It is even possible that proper calcite speleothems begin to grow over the top of them from water running down through the cave system, getting through cracks formed as the walls shrank as they got cooler. But the lava tubes are generally too recent to get any decent paleoclimate data from as the stalactites haven't had long enough to get very big.

Stalagmites!

Stalagmites can also form, but this is much rarer. The ones in the photogragh above are about forty centimetres tall. These stalagmites also form from dripping lava, typically from a fresh lava flow over the top of the lava tube seeps through cracks in the tube and drops down into the empty tube.

The green and coppery colours that you may just be able to make out in this photograph (its a lot more obvious in real life) are chemolithotrophs.  They are organisms (typically bacteria) that get their energy source not from the sun (either directly or indirectly as most of life does) but from the rocks.  These guys literally feed off of the rocks and use chemical reactions of the compounds inside to generate energy.  Plus there are all sorts of former surface organisms that have become specialised to caves, gone white, and lost their eyes and such like, but these are quite rare, as you may imagine.

Typically the last lava flow to flow through the tube is a piddly little affair. It runs down through the centre of the tube, the sides of it cool and form levees which channel the flow.  As a result you sometimes get these bowling alley type formations running through the middle of the tubes.

Lava tubes are pretty damn cool to visit, hopefully the limestone ones that I'll be off to in five weeks time or so will be just as entertaining.

Haleakala: volcanoes, oceans and ice?

Haleakala is the the main peak on the island of Maui in Hawaii, covering 75% of the island's area. Its a dormant volcano, having last erupted in 1790, possibly, depending on wherther Cook's naval charts were accurate or not. Its 3055m tall, quite impressive when the surrounds are so flat (being the Pacific Ocean), so just enough to potentially trigger some altitude issues. Certainly high enough to be freezing cold at night. We drove up early one morning having camped at the base in order to watch the sunrise and then go for a hike around the summit area. It was possibly my favourite day of the entire trip.

The moon and Venus become the last two lights in the sky as the dawn approaches.

Nearly there.

3....2.....1................

First light.  Accompanied by native Hawaiian chanting and conch shell trumpeting. A pretty important site, the summit depression is home to the Grandmother of the demigod Maui (its a bit like discovering just how people there are in the Royal family when you start learning about the relatives of demi-gods). Haleakala translates as "House of the Sun" and you can see why.

The first decent view of the "crater" or is it a "caldera".  Its a shield volcano, so the lavas too runny for a decent caldera. And its quite big for a crater. So what could it be?

The descent down, with some fantastic colours in the early morning light, reds, oranges, purples, browns, greys.  Rather cool, and quite Martian in appearance.

Though not devoid of life.  This is a silversword, a protected species that is only found towards the top of the Hawaiian volcanos.  It lives for up to fifty years, flowering once before dying.

More views across the "crater" floor.  Cinder cones of recent eruptions litter the top, with the steep ring wall surrounding them.  This area was a lot lot bigger than it first appeared at dawn. And so awesome!!!

More views across the floor, with recent (ish) lava flows spread out like a rocky drapey thing. So what is this big depression if its not volcanic in origin?  It turns out to be erosional, two large valleys that lead off each end of the depression eventually eroded through the rock wall that divided them to form the large valley at the top.  It might even have been eroded through by ice during the last ice age (the volcanoes are just about high enough to get ice-caps during ice-ages).  Speaking as a geologist this is really cool.  Not only is this a volcanic landscape, but it might also be a glacial one too! All at less than 21 degrees North of the equator.  Wow!

As we descended we moved towards the northern side of volcano and the valley that leads up from the sea.  Due to the near constant trade-winds in Hawaii the wind direction is nearly always from the north-east.  Being the only change in elevation for thousands of miles there's a lot of cloud and rain when the moisture-laden winds hit the side of the mountain, rise, cool and deposit their rain on the slopes of Hawaii.  As a consequence, the northern and eastern sides of the Hawaiian islands are wet, lush, tropical rainforests with waterfalls and the like.  The United States' wettest city is Hilo on the northern coast of Big Island. The southern and western sides of the islands are far more barren, rocky from  lava flows, or just grassy where there is vegeation.  A real diffrence, quite striking when you drive round the islands and the flora changes so quickly. So as we descended into the valley, the mist and cloud came up to meet us, and the place slowly but surely got more and more vegetated as we descended.  But there were still rocky lava flows here and there to cross.  It was quite a surreal terrain to traverse.  The hike ended with a climb up the steep tracker that lead up the "crater" walls back to the rim.

Back at the top at the end of the hike (and a lift back to the top), looking out towards big island and the volcano of Mauna Loa.

A little rant about airplanes

Why oh why would anyone fly with an American airline if they had the choice.  A couple of my holidays over the last year have involved flying with an American airline. If I have the choice I'd prefer not to do so again. I was on Hawaiian airlines for my Syndey to Honolulu flights, but it was no different to my time on United a year ago. Leg room, tiny. Entertainment system: rubbish, no personal systems on an eleven hour flight, unless you want to pay an additional $15 for it. The food looked awful, tasted of nothing much and there wasn't much of it. The check-in computers were not easy to use so I had to deal with grumpy staff when the system didn't work. At what point will they look at the Middle-Eastern airlines such as Emirates and learn what flying should be like.

Contrast with my flight on Qantas back to Canberra from Sydney the following morning (the plane was late so I had to spend an extra night in sydney because of my missed connection). Check-in system was easy to use and didn't need staff input. I don't understand why you would automate half of the check-in procedure but still need a staff member for the other half, it saves little time and only creates frustration, the new Qantas system was fully automated and very good. The staff were friendly and on an hour-long flight I got a tasty fig scone and a nice cup of tea. Marvellous! Plus a Brocken spectre, which is always a nice treat on flights.

But it wasn't all bad, the airport staff at the Hawaiian airports were very good, not like other US airports, and it was down to a very slow system at Sydney customs and immigration that lead to me missing my final flight and spending an extra night in Sydney.

And it could have been a lot worse I admit, I could have been flying Ryanair, or, god forbid, Iberian.

So I'm back from my holiday in Hawaii, which was as awesome as you might expect.  I've been wondering about how much to blog about this holiday, since it had little to do with Australia, life in Australia or Science.  And neither was I properly travelling so as a travel blog it wouldn't be that interesting with insight or amusing stories. I've decided that I'm going to blog about the sciencey parts of the holiday and leave the rest. So expect some cool volcano related posts over the next week!